I'm kind of disappointed. Somewhere in the back of my mind I believed my Newbold lecture would write itself. I was hoping one day I'd open my laptop and - boom! - there'd be a brilliant lecture manuscript on the desktop. Finished and polished and all. But it's becoming apparent to me that it's not going to happen... Such a bummer. So I'm sitting on my lecture which needs to be ready in about three week's time, and trying to figure this thing out myself, without divine intervention. The title to my lecture is really sexy, I'm really pleased with it - God, Language, Mind, and Men. It's just that now I need a lecture which would match the awesomeness of this title. I can't guarantee anything but I'm doing my best. And while writing and thinking about the lecture, I've realised a funny thing about myself. Whatever it is that I write, I become scarily protective of it. I've noticed it happen when writing my sermons. I'm totally passive-aggressive-possessive-obsessive about my manuscripts. I don't think you could make me give you my sermon manuscript even if you hold a gun to my head. Well, uhmmm, no, I take the last one back, I'm not sure about that. But I really can't bring myself to share my thoughts or manuscripts voluntarily before preaching. And now the same thing is happening but in this case it's even worse. Because part of me is dying for some good feedback but the other part of me just can't get over this mental barrier. Actually, to tell the whole truth, a few months ago I asked two good friends if I could give them the manuscript and if they would tell me what they thought of it, but in reality I don't think it's going to happen. So I guess I'll just give the lecture and face the feedback then, whatever it be. So scary.

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As to news from reading front, on Friday I finished another Maya Angelou's book - it was the seventh of her books I read in a row. And I think it's time for me to stop now because I've come to the place where I google the names of her husbands and her son to see what they looked like. I'm becoming a stalker, I think (is it possible to stalk someone who's not alive any more?). And I have only one thing to say in my defense - I only stalk people who have made a lasting and indelible impression on me. And she certainly has, most certainly.

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I haven't posted any music lately. So here's one song I listened a lot last autumn. When I was in the UK in November, I was turning into a real British - me and L. would watch pictures of the poppy field in London, in the evenings two of us would watch Downton Abbey and The X Factor, and we'd look forward to see the new John Lewis Christmas ad. So when the John Lewis ad was released, I not only fell in love with the ad itself but also with the song they had used there. It's Tom Odell and his version of the song Real Love. I might have or might have not listened to it obsessively for a couple of weeks.